by M. R. Forbes
"My friend Reva lives here. She can be trusted."
"Are you sure?"
"She doesn't know anything about House Red. We're racing buddies."
"Racing?"
"Where do you think I learned to ride like that?"
Maybe it was the blood loss that was slowing my brain. "You street race. Isn't that a little dangerous... you know... for who you are?"
"My aunt always said that if I wasn't strong enough to survive my own passions, I would never be strong enough to stand up to the other Houses." She turned and headed out of the alley. I followed behind.
We climbed the steps and entered the building. I kept my hand over my shoulder, hiding the torn part of my trench and the blood soaked hoodie beneath it. Now that our ride was over the pain was coming back. It was going to need stitches at a minimum, and I wouldn't be doing myself any favors to get into any fights for the next week. Somehow, I doubted that was going to happen.
We walked up three flights of steps. The apartment building was old, but the inside was clean. Beige painted walls, sparkling recycled plastic flooring, a fresh smell.
"It was burned out during the riots, before I was born. The government paid to renovate after the Houses organized the settlement, and the residents have made it a point to keep it looking new. They take a lot of pride in proving all the idiots wrong."
"What kind is Reva?" She looked back at me, a dark expression on her face. "I'm not anti... just curious."
"Then it doesn't matter. You only have to be curious for another minute."
Reva was a troll.
She was small for her kind at only six feet, with dark green flesh that was covered in small, tough pustules filled with a yellowy bodily fluid. She had a large head, a mohawk of thick black hair, and giant, heavy lobed ears covered in a hundred small rings. She was wearing a black sweater and specially made jeans, her feet bare. When she saw Jin, her toothy grin grew massive, and she wrapped her up in a hug, not even seeming to notice she was soaked.
"Jinnie. What are you doing here?" Her voice was somewhere between a train horn and a screaming cat.
"I'm sorry to show up at your door like this Reva, but my friend and I need your help."
She hadn't even noticed me until then. "You look like shit," she said, letting go of Jin and holding out her hand. "Any friend of Jinnie's is a friend of mine."
I started to let go of my shoulder to shake her hand before thinking better of it, and when I did her eyes narrowed. "What the hell happened to you?"
"Attacked by ferals," Jin said. "They came into my building. He saved my life."
"Oh my god. Don't stand out there making puddles in the hall. Come in, come in. You, take off that coat and sweater so I can get a look at the wound. Jin... get out of those wet clothes. I don't have anything your size, but you can nestle into one of my robes while I dry them."
I followed Jin into the apartment. It was a pretty standard living space. A microfiber couch, a flatscreen with the latest news glowing from it, some fake plants. A small kitchen was placed off to the side, and a bedroom and bathroom took up the rear. If it hadn't been for the caged rats on the kitchen counter, I wouldn't have been able to guess what kind of human lived here.
"Sorry, I probably don't have anything you'd want to eat." She must have noticed me eyeing the rats. "I would have gotten a few things if I'd known I was going to have guests. I've got Coke though."
"I'll be right back." Jin disappeared into the bedroom.
I worked on getting out of my clothes, but it was rough with my shoulder. I got the trench and the hoodie off easy enough, but pulling my shirt over my head was another story.
"Here, let me help you." Reva grabbed the edge of the shirt and helped me wiggle out of it. When she saw my grey skin, and the fresh stitches along my abdomen, she gasped. "You look like you find trouble a lot."
"Or trouble finds me. I'm starting to think you're right about that." I winced in pain from the sharp stinging. I looked over at it. Three deep slashes. I was lucky they hadn't reached the muscle.
"Go sit. I'll get some towels and water to clean it out."
"You do this a lot?" I asked her back as she headed for the bathroom.
She turned her head and smiled. "I am a troll."
Right.
Jin came out of the bedroom, lost in the larger female's bathrobe. She was holding her clothes, and she turned and pushed aside a sliding door to reveal the washer and dryer. She threw her stuff in, got it running, and then sat next to me. She looked different with her hair flat against her head instead of all chunked up. A little younger, a little more innocent.
"That wound doesn't look too bad, compared to what you already seem to be going through."
"It still hurts." I glanced over at the bathroom and lowered my voice. "We can't stay here. She might not know who you are, but how can we be sure they don't know who she is? They might have been watching you for weeks."
She nodded. "I know, but we had to go somewhere. I need you as healthy as you get."
"What about resources... money, intel, that kind of stuff?"
"It's a risk to expose myself when we don't know who knows what. We need a little more confidence in who our friends and enemies are before I'm going to try to access any of House Red's assets."
"Can you access them?"
"Yes, thanks to you. The necklace isn't just a pretty gem. There's a data chip inside. Once I load it into a secured workstation and put in the password, I'll be identified as Red and gain immediate control of all of it."
"It must be a lot."
She smiled. "I admit, I don't know the full breadth. But yes, I imagine it is. I have some access already, using my own code, but this will give me everything."
"Are you going to have me killed if we survive this?"
I threw it out there as bluntly as I could. I wanted to see how she would react. She kept smiling, and turned her head when Reva returned with the towels. She was probably really good at poker, too.
"Aww, you look like you got lost in a cloud. Slide over a bit."
I hadn't realized she was practically sitting on me, having moved in so we could speak quietly. She pushed herself to the other side of the couch, and Reva took the spot next to me. She patted a damp cloth on my shoulder, cleaning the dried blood away from the wound. She used another to get down into the cut a little, which hurt, and a third to dry it all off.
Then she put one against her arm, and pushed.
I could hear the pop of the pustule opening, and I tried not to look disgusted. I sat and stared ahead, while she popped two more and collected the fluid on the towel.
"Have you ever been healed by a troll before?"
"I heard trolls don't like to heal homo sapiens."
She laughed. "Yeah, a lot of us don't, but can you blame us?"
"Not at all."
The fluid that Reva was about to apply to my arm would bind to my cells, kicking them into an overdrive that pushed them to heal and multiply, fixing my shoulder without stitches in about three minutes.
In the beginning, when trolls had first started to appear, the military had taken a keen interest in the secretion's healing properties, and as trolls weren't immediately classified as people... It had left a lot of bad feelings all around that the riots had only made worse. Trolls were prized catches, and even today their puss could be bought on black markets in some cases, above the table in others. There were plenty of trolls that made a good living donating their bodily fluid, though the extraction of more than a few of the pustules at a time became incredibly painful.
"Like I said, a friend of Jinnie's is a friend of mine." She wiped the yellow ick on the gashes. It felt warm and cold and slimy, and then really, really warm. The stuff healed me so fast, I could literally see the flesh knitting back together.
"Thank you."
"I can get that one for you too, if you want." She motioned towards the stitches.
"No, that's okay. You've done more than enough for me
already."
I stood up and grabbed my shirt, slipping it back over my head. My shoulder felt a lot better. It was too bad she couldn't do anything for the bruising and the sore muscles. I left the hoodie off, picking up my coat and putting it on. The familiar weight of it was comforting.
"So, Jinnie, tell me more about these ferals. Did they attack anyone else?"
I looked at Jin. Really, really good at poker. You'd never know they had killed her sister less than six hours ago. I walked over to a window and peeked out to the street below. There was no motion, and no traffic except for a couple of orcs walking down the street.
"No. They were down in the garage. I was just coming home. They came after me after I parked the bike."
"Oh shit. How'd you get away?"
"I had a gun," I said, turning around. "I lost it in the fight."
She was staring at me, trying to figure me out. I looked like death, was lurking in a garage, and carrying a weapon. It didn't sound innocent to me either.
"Jin, I really need to be getting home. Mr. Timms is going to be pissed that he hasn't had his dinner yet."
"Mr. Timms?"
"My cat."
"Oh. Okay. Let me just check on my clothes."
She jumped up, not realizing how precariously the robe was perched. It fell away as she reached her feet, giving me the full monty. I should have been the gentleman and looked away, but my eye caught the dragon tattoo again, and I was mesmerized by the intricacy of the work. I hardly even noticed the rest of her.
"Do you like it?" If she was embarrassed by her nakedness, it didn't show.
"It's amazing," I replied, still staring.
So much for honorable.
CHAPTER TWENTY-TWO
Three stars.
The clothes were dry enough, and we left a few minutes later. Jin asked Reva to look after the bike for her and to make sure she kept it hidden. She also warned her to be alert for signs of any ferals wandering around.
Along with the news reports out of Connecticut, it was easy to convince her there was some kind of weird coincidence going on. She'd responded by showing off a nice 12 gauge with armor-piercing shot.
Between the bazooka and her healing factor, she would be just fine.
We took to the streets, sharing an umbrella. It was still pouring, the rain keeping a lot of people indoors or in cabs. Hopefully, the weather would keep the ferals away, too. They didn't like getting wet, because the smell made it hard for them to sneak and stalk.
She seemed satisfied to just walk for a few blocks. I had seen plenty of people lose people. I had failed to save a life on more than one occasion, and it never got easier. I didn't know exactly what she was thinking or feeling, but I could imagine some of the things. I knew what the experience felt like for me, and I was trained to be ready for it. Maybe she had been too? I didn't know. So we walked. She needed the time.
She wasn't the only one. I'd been on edge since Connecticut, and the normalcy of the activity helped me come down from my adrenaline high. It left me a little less alert, and my body even more sore than it had already been, but it was welcome. I put my hand to my mouth and coughed.
"Do you have a destination in mind?" I asked a short time later, glancing over at her. She was wearing that expressionless visage, though the slight curl in her lip told me she was pissed and scared.
"You're supposed to be protecting me. Where do you suggest?"
"I am, but I grew up near Chicago. I don't know this city that well. I recommend a hotel, not too close to anyone they might connect to you. A three-star, maybe. Not too fancy, but fancy enough they'll have to worry about control if they want to keep using ferals."
"I know a place."
She stopped walking and went to the curb, whistling and putting out her hand. It took a couple of tries, but a cab stopped at the side of the road within the minute.
The driver was an older man with a thick handlebar mustache. "Rainin' cats and dogs out there. Where to?"
"The Arcadia," Jin said, sliding across the seat so I could follow behind her.
The cab moved out at the same time I closed the door.
"The Arcadia? I've never heard of it."
"It's pretty new. I've never been there, but I've heard good things, and it isn't supposed to be too pricey."
"Good enough."
"Oh... I feel strange asking you this but... can you pay for it?"
"Don't worry about it. I was going to." I wasn't about to risk getting tracked down through her bank account, and I was pretty sure mine hadn't been compromised... yet.
"Thank you."
It was cute that she said thank you. "You're welcome."
My phone shook in my trench.
I fished it out. Danelle.
"Where are you?"
"A few minutes from the Lincoln tunnel. We'll be downtown in twenty minutes or so."
"Look up the Arcadia hotel. You'll be able to find me there."
"Okay. Any luck with Jin?"
I peeked over at her. She was looking the other way, out the window - giving me as much privacy as she could in the cab.
"It's a long story, but yeah. We'll fill you in when we hook up."
"I was worried about you. I'm glad you're still alive."
"Me too." I stifled a cough. "See you soon. I'm looking forward to meeting this friend of yours."
"Trust me, you're not."
She hung up.
"The cavalry," I said to Jin when she turned back around. I motioned towards the driver. "We can talk later."
She nodded, and we made the rest of the ride in silence.
CHAPTER TWENTY-THREE
Pac-man, or Donkey Kong?
The Arcadia hotel was a lot more posh than I had expected. Sixty stories of glass in a corkscrew shape, and a large, modern lobby bathed in sharp reds and oranges, with furniture composed of basic shapes and wrapped in white synthetic leather. The reception desk looked more like the interior of a spacecraft, with expensive translucent touch-screens and concierges dressed in a silver suits and skirts. It was an interesting place, the kind I would normally steer far away from. Hopefully that would make it a good place to hide.
"You have any suites available? Preferably something high?" I was a little iffy on going out of range of the fields, but in the end I'd decided it would hurt them more than it would hurt us.
My attendant was Jin's age, dark-skinned and lanky. He ran his fingers along the screens. "It looks like all the upper floors are booked." I guess karma had a different idea. "Room 618 is the best I can do. It doesn't have much of a view, but it's private."
His eyes tracked over to Jin. He probably thought the worst of both of us. I was way too sick and ugly to be with someone like her without money being involved.
"If that's what you've got, we'll take it." I handed him my card.
"If you'll just put your hand on the scanner, we can associate the door lock on your room to your palm-print."
Biometric security was pretty new to the hotel scene, and while the average Joe might have loved it for being both easy and secure, anyone who cared about their privacy would rather be robbed.
"You don't have keys?"
He smirked. "We have cards. They aren't as secure."
"I'll take the cards."
He hit a few more parts of the screen, and then reached down below the desk. He handed me the electronic room keys. "Here you go. Have a great stay. Do you have any bags you need brought up?"
"No, no bags." I almost winced as I said it, knowing it only made the whole situation look worse.
"Of course." His eyes flicked to Jin again, and I could see the smile creeping onto his face as he turned away.
I handed her one of the cards, and stuck mine in my pocket. We headed for the elevator.
"How are you holding up?" I asked. She hadn't said much since we'd left Reva's, and she'd been wearing the stoic expression almost the entire time. I was beginning to worry.
I hit the button for the elevator
, and it opened right away.
"I will be fine. It's just... hard to accept that this is real. All of my life, I've had the freedom to live as I wished, and at the same time known what I might one day be expected to do. It isn't just Natsumi... I can't be the person I was anymore. For all of the money and power held by my House, all of my options are gone."
"You're talking about the racing?"
"Not just the racing. It is an example. Who I befriend, where I go, who I love... Not to mention, I have to convince everyone I'm a powerful wizard, and I'm not even sensitive."
The elevator stopped.
"This is our floor." Once we were off, I grabbed my phone and sent Dannie the room number. It was a tough gig, but I could think of worse. "You should try having one foot in the grave for a while."
She looked at me. I knew that one. Pity. Damn. "I'm sorry. I don't mean to sound ungrateful. I-"
I put up my hand to cut her off. "It isn't your place to be sorry. I'm the one being an asshole. It's been hard not to be angry at the world for where I've ended up. I hope you don't wind up feeling the same way, because it sucks most of the time."
"Not all of the time?"
Not after what Rayon said, but I wasn't going to tell her that.
The suite had a king-sized bed in a separate bedroom, a living room with a pull-out couch, and a large bathroom. It was all done up with the same modern decor as the lobby, only the walls were painted in diodes that gave off a soft glow, and allowed the guest to make it whatever color, or combination of colors, they wanted.
My phone buzzed. "My friend should be here in ten. As far as she's concerned, you're Red's niece, and nothing more. She doesn't need to know the whole truth."
Jin nodded and took a seat on the couch. She pushed her hair away from her eyes and stared at me for a few seconds, looking unsure.
"Why did you decide to become a ghost?" she asked at last. I guess she was trying to decide how much she wanted to know about me.
"I didn't really choose it. I just kind of... fell into it."
